The invention relates to apparatus for playing record carriers having a memory and loading the memory with record-carrier identifications together with preferred selections denoting specific parts of the record carriers corresponding to the record-carrier identifications, detecting, prior to playing of the record-carrier, the record-carrier identification of the record-carrier to be played, selecting a preferred selection associated with the detected record-carrier identification if the detected record-carrier identification is stored in the memory, and then controlling the apparatus to play that the part of the record-carrier as defined by the chosen preferred selection.
Such type of apparatus is known from Netherlands patent application No. 8402095 which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 4,779,252 , and is incorporated by reference. The apparatus described therein is a player for Compact Discs wherein a user can enter a preferred selection for a plurality of discs. This preferred selection together with the disc identification of the associated disc is stored in the memory. If a disc for which a preferred program is stored is subsequently loaded into the apparatus in order to be played, the parts of the disc corresponding to the stored preferred program are played, providing that the user has instructed to do so by actuation of an appropriate key on the apparatus.
Since such an apparatus enables a specific desired part of the disc to be played at an arbitrary instant without necessitating another time-consuming search operation, the apparatus is very suitable for use in broadcasting studios or discothe/ ques. Generally, music program produced by broadcasting studios and discothe/ ques comprises a sequence of tracks from different discs and, usually, only one of the tracks recorded on each of said discs is reproduced. The apparatus described in the forgoing enables the preferred selections forming the program of tracks to be reproduced to be stored in advance in the memory of the apparatus by the disc jockey. During the reproduction of the music program, the disc jockey then merely has to load the discs containing the desired tracks into the apparatus for playing, after which the part of the disc containing the desired track and indicated by the preferred selection can be searched and played automatically. In this way, it is avoided that during production of the program the disc jockey consumes too much time in searching for the parts of the disc on which the desired tracks are recorded.
A drawback of such conventional apparatus of this type is that on account of the limited storage capacity of the memory the number of preferred selections which can be stored is also limited, so that only preferred selections can be stored for a limited number of tracks. This means that once the memory is full a number of preferred selections have to be removed from the memory in order to enter preferred selections for new discs. A problem associated with the known apparatus is then that making a well-founded choice as to the preferred selections to be removed is an almost impossible task.